Ep. 60: How Rachel Tobac went from medicine to infosec

In this episode, Abbey interviews social engineering expert Rachel Tobac and learns how she transitioned from teaching to infosec by way of one exhilarating competition. 

Growing up, Rachel’s family didn’t have normal dinner table conversations. Her father was in medicine, so their chats revolved around strange diseases and scary edge cases. So when Rachel went to college, she aimed to follow in her father’s footsteps.

However, life had other plans, and she ended up becoming a teacher instead. But she wanted to do more than teach a small number of students – she wanted to help more people at scale. So she tried to figure out a way to do that. 

After moving across the country to Silcon Valley and learning more about the world of tech, she stumbled upon her true calling (with a little nudge from her husband and now co-founder): social engineering. She took a trip to Defcon four years ago, won second place in a social engineering capture the flag hacking event, and she was hooked.

She dove in head first, learned all she could about infosec, social engineering, and security, and never looked back. Now, she and her husband run Social Proof Security, the boutique educational security firm they founded two years ago, and boast some of the largest tech companies in the Valley as clients. Rachel is also chair of the board of the non-profit WISP (Women in Security and Privacy), helps get scholarships for women to attend Defcon each year, and travels and speaks at all kinds of conferences and events herself. 

When she isn’t educating companies about making their processes safer, she’s traveling the world, thinking up new ways to hack, or staring at her rescue dog. 

In this episode, you’ll learn all about Rachel’s somewhat meandering path into security, how she discovered her passion for educating teams about social engineering, what it takes to get into the field, and why she loves her job.

Find Rachel on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RachelTobac

Check out Rachel's company: https://www.socialproofsecurity.com/

Learn more about DefCon: https://www.defcon.org/

Read up on WISP: https://www.wisporg.com/

Find Abbey on Twitter: https://twitter.com/abbeyrenn

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